Two of the buildings tagged were the Whittier Daily News and the adjacent Whittier Masonic Temple. Cleanup crews removed the red scrawls of graffiti on both buildings by 4 p.m. Monday.

A 17-year-old Whittier boy was arrested at about 6 p.m. Saturday on suspicion of felony vandalism. He was released to the custody of his parents at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

The Police Department’s bicycle team originally stopped the teen Saturday night for jaywalking in the area of Greenleaf Avenue and Mar Vista Street, said Whittier police spokeswoman Officer Diana Salazar.

“During the contact, he tried dumping a spray can in a storm drain,” she said. “In talking to him, he admitted to spray-painting 19 locations in the area.”

Salazar said police linked 41 more vandalized locations to the boy. She didn’t know when these occurred.

The additional locations had the same painted name, she said. Salazar said the the boy was acting alone.

It is likely the teen could be tied to more taggings. Police said the investigation is ongoing.

It is not clear if the other areas hit had been cleared late Monday.

“We may have. But we have no connection on what the abatement team does and what the police does,” said David Pelser, public works director. “We have no way of tying them to a particular person or tagger.”

He added that the city’s graffiti abatement crews respond to requests without being involved in the intelligence-gathering on police cases.

Salazar said the city spends $318,000 a year on graffiti abatement.

“We get calls about graffiti removal all the time from different sources,” Pelser said.

He said the city has several graffiti teams working all the time and a crew on the weekends. They remove graffiti from public locations and on some private properties.

Ruby Gonzales started working for the company in 1991. Since then she has written about cities, school districts, crimes, cold cases, courts, the San Gabriel River, local history, anime, insects, forensics and the early days of the Internet when people still referred to it as the "information superhighway." Her current beat includes breaking news, crimes and courts for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star News and Whittier Daily News. When not in crime reporter mode, she frequents the remaining bookstores in the San Gabriel Valley, haunts craft stores or gets dragged to eateries by a relative who is a foodie.